


helping hands

by pharmakon



Series: Steven Universe [6]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Rescue, Zoomans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 19:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16046822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pharmakon/pseuds/pharmakon
Summary: "Sadie!" a tearful voice called. Say-Dee! "You must come at once!" Sadie opened the door and was immediately engulfed by a tall, sobbing blonde."Wha-- Jay-Ten?" Sadie patted her on the back a little awkwardly. The Zoo humans were all tactile, she'd noticed. It was hard not to notice, when you were surrounded by their wide-eyed, babyish expressions and being urged to come and play a game! We are all having lots of fun. "What's wrong? Did your balloons fly away again?"That had been a fun day at Funland.





	helping hands

**Author's Note:**

> I think the Zoomans are kinda cute, honestly.
> 
> Written and posted in one sitting, with the bare minimum of editing. I regret nothing.

A frantic knocking on her front door, followed by the crash of what had probably been a potted plant, woke Sadie up from her afternoon nap. She pushed herself up off the bed and rubbed at her eyes, then staggered up and made her way to the door. "Who is it?" she asked, already guessing the answer. There were only about thirty people who would be bothering her at this time of day without even ringing the doorbell, and every single one of them followed her around like a lost puppy.

"Sadie!" a tearful voice called.  _Say-Dee!_ "You must come at once!" Sadie opened the door and was immediately engulfed by a tall, sobbing blonde. 

"Wha-- Jay-Ten?" Sadie patted her on the back a little awkwardly. The Zoo humans were all tactile, she'd noticed. It was hard  _not_ to notice, when you were surrounded by their wide-eyed, babyish expressions and being urged to  _come and play a game! We are all having lots of fun._ "What's wrong? Did your balloons fly away again?" 

 _That_ had been a fun day at Funland. 

Jay-Ten shook her head, tears streaming unselfconsciously down her face. Her clothes-- soft hand-me-downs from Vidalia, who wore about the same size-- were covered in wet sand. "Wy-Six has fallen down into a hole, and we cannot reach him!"

Sadie grabbed her jacket off the coat rack and shrugged it on; if she was gonna have to do any climbing, she didn't want scraped-up elbows for her trouble. "Have you asked any of the Crystal Gems for help? If he's somewhere hard to reach, we might need their skills."

"Gee-Four went down to their dwelling, but received no response," Jay-Ten sniffled, "and Onn-Yun could not offer assistance, either." And the other Amethysts, who were related in some weird alien way to the Amethyst from the Crystal Gems, were in space right now with Lars, right. 

"Well, they're probably on a mission," Sadie reasoned. She stepped outside and made sure to close (not lock!) her door. Her mom let the Zoomans hang around the house whenever they wanted to, kind of like stray cats. "Show me the way, okay? I'll help you guys out."

Jay-Ten led her down to a more remote part of the beach-- a section of cliffs and rock faces that were easy to climb, if hard to get down from. Sadie winced when she saw it; it was possible that she and everyone else hadn't been paying enough attention to where the Zoomans spent their time. They were pretty creative when they played, so they didn't get into as much trouble as they could have, but they didn't have much of a concept of consequences or serious problems.

Sadie and the rest of the boardwalk had laid down some ground rules for the Zoomans to follow: look both ways before crossing the road, don't go outside of town, don't try to get into the kitchen area of any restaurants or Pee Dee's food truck, always stay with a buddy, that kind of thing.  _Don't go away with anyone you don't recognize_ had been harder to explain, since Zoomans would just introduce themselves and then say that the other person was their friend, so of course they recognized them! 'Stranger danger'-- or really, danger in general-- wasn't a concept that came naturally to their minds.

At least the explanation about not eating Tide Pods had been taken to heart after the bulky dark-haired one had bitten into one and burned their mouth. 

A group of Zoomans was lingering around a part of the cliff face, teary-eyed and fidgety; when they saw Jay-Ten returning with Sadie, most of them ran up at once to greet them.

"Sadie!" 

"Jay-Ten, you have found her!" One of the shorter Zoomans threw her arms around Sadie's shoulders and squeezed. "Sadie, Wy-Six is feeling  _hurt._ He has fallen, and we cannot reach him! So we sent Jay-Ten to find you, since you are even  _better_ than a little voice." A murmur of agreement bubbled up around her.

Sadie blushed. Tell a Zooman what to do to make something more fun  _one_ time, and they'll all decide that you're their new caretaker. She looked back down at the rest of the group and asked, "Where're the other five of you?" She only saw about twenty-five. There _should_ have been about thirty. 

"Five of us went away with Ron-Al-Do to help with his snake people game," one of the Zoomans said earnestly. She was wearing what looked like one of Buck Dewey's old hoodies. "The rest of us played here, by the cliff!"

"Did you remember to eat?" Sadie asked, making her way down to where the other Zoomans were clustered in concern. 

Nodnodnod. "Jen-Nee and Kiki brought us food, in exchange for our helping them play the game where you bring food to others at their dwellings." For some reason they never mispronounced Kiki's name. Maybe it was a syllable thing?

Sadie's musings cut off as she got closer to the cliff face and saw the terrified expressions on the other Zoomans' faces. It looked like this situation was worse than she thought. "Where's Wy-Six?" she asked the nearest one, gearing up for serious problems, and they pointed down.

There was a crevice, between two of the rock faces, half-covered by seaside grasses and brush and small enough to be jumped over. It gaped jagged at one end, though, and went down about twelve feet before closing on a bunch of boulders. Wy-Six was wedged between the cliff faces about seven feet down, squeezed between the boulders at an awkward angle, with a longer drop below him. 

Sadie's heart skipped a beat. "Wy-Six!" she yelled down, and was relieved to see his head tilt up to track her, the blown-wide whites of his eyes. "I'm gonna get you out of there, okay?"

"Okay!" he called back, but there was a strain in his voice. "But I cannot climb back up, and I cannot see how you would reach me." Doubt, that was  _doubt._ Some of the Zoomans seemed more capable of it than others. 

"Sadie will find a way!" Jay-Ten called back down to him in reassurance. "She is better than a little voice!"

Sadie took out her phone and speed-dialed Dr. Maheswaran, Steven's friend Connie's mom. She'd helped some of the Zoomans before, when they got scrapes or bruises or when the effects of their Gem tech-- namely the inability to feel pain, caused by some kind of drug that they'd been administered through their earrings-- had finally worn off. They hadn't discovered  _that_ happy little effect until one of the Zoomans had stubbed his toe and woken up the whole house. 

Her mom's response to that had led to a veritable Band-Aid cult among the new arrivals; apparently a Band-Aid could fix anything. Headache from eating too much sugar? Band-Aid! Paper cut? Band-Aid! Weird rash from running around in the woods without proper clothing? Band-Aid! Even if the rash was on your arm and the Band-Aid was on your  _forehead._ It drove Dr. Maheswaran to distraction.

"Hello?" Dr. Maheswaran's voice sounded stressed. "Sadie Miller, is that you?"

"Hi, Dr. Maheswaran." Sadie climbed closer to the edge of the crevice to get a closer look at Wy-Six's injuries. "Could you come down to Beach City today? Wy-Six is stuck in a crevice and I think he needs medical attention." One of the Zoomans poked the phone curiously, and Sadie maneuvered it away. 

"A crevice? How far down? Are you able to get him out?" Her tone went hard. "I swear, those Gems need to take more responsibility for their charges. Steven and Connie can't do  _everything._ "

"They _are_ pretty busy with all that alien Homeworld stuff," Sadie pointed out. "And Garnet always keeps an eye on them. They're just on a mission right now, so I guess they assumed the Zoomans would stay in town."

Dr. Maheswaran tched. "Not much of an excuse, given how many of them there are. Who let them play by the cliffs in the first place?" She huffed. "Oh, well. I can be there in about an hour. Try to find a way to get him out in the meantime-- maybe you could ask someone in town to help."

"Will do, Dr. Maheswaran." Sadie frowned down at the cliffs. "I gotta make another call. See you soon."

She texted another Beach City resident, was informed that he would be there in ten minutes, and then bit her lip and leaned over the edge of the cliff. "Can you climb up any higher, Wy-Six? It might make you easier to reach."

"I have tried," Wy-Six told her, wide-eyed with bewilderment. "But I cannot make my leg work! It's very strange."

Sadie's blood ran cold. "Oh. Can you... feel, your leg?" Wy-Six nodded; she saw that his eyes were wet and red, and her heart went mushy. He was being incredibly brave, especially if you considered that two months ago, he'd never even felt anything approaching pain.  

"It is  _hurt,"_ he said. "Yes?"

"Yeah," Sadie agreed softly. "Yeah, it is. We can make it better, though." She talked with him for a few more minutes, getting the other Zoomans to chime in to keep him calm, until a screech of tires heralded her help's arrival.

"Sadie, hey!" Greg Universe greeted, climbing out of his van. "You said you needed some help with something?"

"With Wy-Six," she agreed. "He might have to go to the hospital, though." And who knew what would happen to the Zoomans, if they were deemed incompetent or separated, or if anyone noticed the alien manipulation of their genetics. They were so open that a _five-year-old_ could take advantage of them.

Wy-Six called from the crevice, "Hello, Ga-reg!" The other Zoomans eyed Mr. Universe a little warily, like they'd been spurned in the past or something. Sadie didn't know what _that_ was about.

Greg pulled a length of rope, connected to a harness, from his van. "Okay," he huffed. "I think this'll help."

Sadie stared. "Where'd you even get that?" They didn't exactly sell climbing equipment at the local supermarket.

Greg shrugged. "My storage unit's got a lotta stuff in it, I'll tell you that much." He laughed. "Only problem is, if he's wedged in there, I'm not sure he can get it on on his own. Can anyone here climb?"

The Zoomans frowned in confusion and glanced around at each other; Sadie preempted whatever they were going to say with, "I used to take rock-climbing classes. I can do it, I think."

Greg scratched his head. "I dunno, Sadie. I wouldn't want to have to explain to Barb why I let her daughter break a leg on a rescue mission."

Sadie smiled ruefully. "I'm already gonna have to explain how I let Wy-Six break his as it is. I think I can do it." She took the harness.

Greg tied the rope to his van, climbed in to make sure his van was in park, and called, "You're good!"

Sadie rolled the rope out to the edge of the cliff, checked the tread on her shoes, and climbed gingerly out over the edge. The Zoomans clustered around the edge to babble and talk to her, and she shooed them off. "Shush, guys, I gotta focus right now." She reached a foot down and felt around for another foothold, then moved a careful hand down a few feet. The first rule of climbing, drilled into her head back in elementary school, was this: always have at least three appendages on the rock. Any less, and you risked a bad fall. 

Another few feet, and Sadie was just above Wy-Six. From here, she could see the blood streaked on Wy-Six's leg and the horrified pain in his expression, and her heart clenched. She wished the Zoomans could still be in their spacecraft home, where they never knew want or fear or pain. They hadn't been raised to this kind of thing. They were as different from Earth humans as dogs were to wolves. "It's gonna be okay," she assured him. Her foot slipped, sending a rock clattering down below, and she winced. "We'll both be okay. Here, let me--" She got her foot onto the same ledge that Wy-Six was using to prop himself up and rested for a moment, then maneuvered herself so she was facing him. Wy-Six's face was streaked with tears. 

"Hello, Say-Dee," he gasped. "It is nice to see you."

Sadie wrestled the harness over his arms and gritted out, "Nice to see you too, Wy-Six." She fixed a buckle, flinching at Wy-Six's pained noise, and said, "There. Does that feel secure?" Nodnodnod. "Okay." She whooshed out a sigh. "Okay. Greg, you can pull him up now!" And then, to Wy-Six: "Sorry. This is probably gonna hurt."

To his credit, Wy-Six only gasped when the rope wrenched up, pulling him along to the edge of the crevice, where Jay-Ten and the other Zoomans were waiting to pull him up. Sadie climbed back up to the top after him, panting with effort, then reached the edge and collapsed on the ground. She hadn't done anything that strenuous in a while.

"Dr. Maheswaran's gonna be here in a bit," she told Greg, "but maybe we should meet her in the hospital. I'm just not sure if my mom and I can handle the medical bills."

Greg waved a hand. "I'm still a millionaire, remember? I'll handle all that stuff. What's the point of all this money if I just keep it all to myself? I already called an ambulance." He was kneeling next to Wy-Six, who was awake and talking softly with one of the other Zoomans.

Sadie blinked. "You'd do that? Thanks, Mr. Universe." 

"No problem!" He smiled warmly. "That's what a community's for, right? You can't be expected to take care of everything alone."

Sadie glanced back at the Zoomans, all clustered together and encouraging Wy-Six to be strong, because he would be okay soon. They touched easily, smiled easily, knew no loneliness or depression or anxiety. Every one of them had known the others for as long as they could remember, and every one of them accepted the others entirely. A community whole and entire.

"Right," she agreed. Huh. Maybe the Zoomans weren't so different from regular people after all.


End file.
